The Internet contains a variety of information, some of which may be categorized as relatively good information, and some as relatively bad information. But how does one discern the difference between what is good and what is bad information? Because publishing is as easy as copying files to a Web server, the files are readily available to the world. Further anyone can easily publish material, without having to have the respective material approved.
Content created by real-life authorities in a subject matter is typically considered trusted and therefore good information while other contributions that are created by sources of a less reliable authority are considered less trusted, or un-trusted, and accordingly used with an associated higher risk. The difficulty lies in determining whether any given content should be considered good and therefore trusted or bad and accordingly un-trusted, when using a source that is considered to be an authority.
Current methods for determining authority within the Internet typically use social attributes including volume of content, following of content, or even popularity to associate a level of trust or respectability with content. Internet authority is not currently based on real life authority external to the Internet environment. As an example, during a search on a topic of infant colic, a capability of filtering results using articles with one or more contributors who are pediatricians with a specified number of years of experience would be very useful, rather then only being able to filter on most popular articles.
Search engines typically provide a relevance score for search results, associating relevance of the results as compared to the search terms. The methods used in relevance ratings from search engines typically include a number of techniques. In one example, a frequency and location of keywords located within the Web page is used, wherein the fewer times the keyword appears within the body of a page, the lower score received for that keyword. In another example, the length of time the Web page has existed is used in a determination. Because new Web pages are created daily and not all pages remain for long periods of time, duration is used as an attribute. Longer lasting pages therefore tend to receive views and remain relevant. Pages with an established history tend to have more value. In a similar manner the number of other Web pages that link to a particular page is used as an indicator or usefulness or relevance.
In an example of linking pages, a ranking of how many hops a specific content is located relative to a pre-reviewed, well trusted page might also be used. The fewer hops from a trusted page, the more well trusted the content is typically considered.
Ranking provided by a third party might also be used, for example, to rank a specific topic. An author might also be ranked for trustworthiness of the author in Internet communities relevant to a particular topic. Author rank might be calculated using a number of relevant/irrelevant messages posted; a document goodness of all documents initiated by the author; a total number of documents initiated or posted by the author within a defined time period; a total number of replies or comments made by the author; and, a number of (online) groups to which the author is a member.
An agent rank might be provided wherein content creators, or agents, could be given reputation scores, which could influence rankings of pages where respective content appears, or which the agents own, edit, or endorse. Agent rank might be useful when identifying individual agents responsible for content is used to influence search ratings, when the identity of agents can be reliably associated with content, when the granularity of association can be smaller than an entire web page, enabling agents to disassociate themselves from information appearing near the information for which the agent is responsible, when attaching the same agent identity to content at multiple locations, and/or when multiple agents can make contributions to a single Web page in which each agent is associated only with a portion of content provided and an agent can disclaim association with portions of content, such as advertising, that appear on the agent's web site.
Social ranking might be used wherein authors who are more popular on one or more social media networks are considered of more authority, more likely to have readers interested in, and/or more likely to have readers trust respective associated content.
The common problem in all of the described approaches is none of the associations are directly linked to real life credentials of specific individual contributors of the content.